1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive on which is mounted a disk cartridge to accommodate a disk, which is an information recording/reproducing medium, so as to protect a recording surface of the disk from contamination sources such as dust and fingerprints.
2. Description of the Related Art
As disk capacity increases, information has to be recorded with a higher density in order to accommodate more information on a disk using a similar surface area as that of previous disks. As recording density increases, recording and reproducing information are more easily affected when the recording surface of the disk is contaminated with, as an example, dust and fingerprints. Thus, the usage of a disk cartridge to protect the recording surface of the disk from contamination is likely to become popular.
Such a disk cartridge has an aperture to allow a spindle motor to rotate the disk and an optical pickup to record information to or read information from the recording surface. Additionally, the disk cartridge has a shutter that closes and opens the aperture. Furthermore, the disk cartridge has a latch that locks the shutter so that the shutter does not open due to an external impact when the aperture is closed.
As described above, a disk drive in which the disk cartridge, mounted to record/reproduce information, has to unlock the latch and open the aperture when the disk cartridge is loaded in order to gain access to the disk and/or the information thereon. In addition, the disk drive should be able to lock the shutter so that the shutter does not open after closing the aperture when the disk cartridge is unloaded. That is, if the shutter is not locked firmly, the aperture may be inadvertently opened while moving the disk cartridge and the recording surface of the disk may be contaminated with, for example, dust and fingerprints.